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As first reported by TPM, Tamyra d'Ippolito, a cafe owner from Bloomington, confirms to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that a broad coalition helped her garner more than 4,500 signatures necessary to get on the ballot for the Indiana Democratic primary: "We’ve got Democrats signing, we’ve got Republicans signing, we’ve got tea bag people signing, we’ve got libertarians signing, independents."

Democratic leaders are worried that the political newcomer won't stand a chance in the general election. Her nomination "would be a complete and unmitigated disaster" a leading Indiana Democrat told Politico. If she has secured enough signatures, she would be the sole Democrat on the ballot; a write-in campaign is the only way another Democrat could win the nomination.

So why is d'Ippolito running? "Basically my big beef with Evan Bayh is that he was not representing the people of Indiana," says d'Ippolito. "I sent him letters all the time, and I got back letters three weeks later that weren’t talking about anything" she had written to the senator about.

She criticized Bayh from the left. "I'm obviously for health care reform, and he was tap dancing on that," she says. "I'm totally, absolutely for health care." Asked if she would vote, like Bayh has done, to restrict taxpayer-funding of abortion, d'Ippolito replies, "I'm a woman. Are you kidding? No. No."

Update: d'Ippolito now tells Greg Sargent that actually she's not sure if she has enough signatures.

“We’ll have 4,500 by the end of today,” she said, adding that she has “no clue” whether she’s crossed that number yet.

I just called d'Ippolito again, and she says: "We have enough signatures, we're putting them in. I'm at the clerk's office right now." Asked how many signatures she has, d'Ippolito replied "forty-five hundred." She informed me she only got "30 minutes of sleep last night" and said she had to go.